


I say that fate should not tempt me

by pearl_o



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Chess, Coming of Age, Dreams, F/M, Post-X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), Telepathic Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2016-11-25
Packaged: 2018-09-02 01:19:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8645596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearl_o/pseuds/pearl_o
Summary: Conversations, chess games, dreams--the months following Apocalypse give Jean a lot to work through.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [annejumps](https://archiveofourown.org/users/annejumps/gifts).



In the Professor’s study, looking down at the beautiful wooden chess set laid out in the center, Jean says, “But I already know how to play.”

“Yes, I know you do,” the Professor says. He wheels away from his desk, coming forward to meet her. “But have you ever lost a game, Jean?”

She has to stop to think about it. “No.”

“I expect you’ve never played without unintentionally using your powers. It took me years to realize it about myself.”

Jean frowns. She opens her hand in front of her, reaching out with her mind to float one pawn a few inches above the carved gameboard. “You think it will help?”

The Professor pauses for a moment before he answers. Jean can see, feel, him weighing his words. “Chess is good mental exercise. It never hurts to practice strategy and tactics,” he says. “As for your abilities… It’s not about keeping them subdued, but the more control you have, the more you can decide how you want to use your power. It serves you, not you it.”

She remembers the feeling that came over her in Cairo when she finally let herself free: overwhelming and amazing all at once. But not frightening, not like it was always was before.

She felt like she was burning to ash, and yet she was continually reformed again even as she combusted, tethered there to the world and her friends and her family she needed to protect.

“This is only a small thing,” the Professor continues. “If you would rather not, that’s fine.”

“I’d like to,” Jean says, a little too abrupt. She sets the pawn gently back down, and gives the Professor a small smile. “I would like it.”

The Professor smiles back.

* * *

“I can see why you’re Charles’s favorite,” Erik says to her one day.

He’s watching as Jean combs through some of the new supplies that have arrived, using her powers to quickly separate and sort through the jumble and form nice neat groups. 

She shoots him a quick look, raising an eyebrow. She doesn’t slow what she’s doing; she doesn’t have to look at it to know it’s going properly. “The Professor doesn’t have favorites,” she tells him.

“Is that so,” Erik says, but it’s not really a question. 

It’s odd, still, to think of him as Erik. But he hasn’t been Magneto since he took off his helmet, in the aftermath of everything. And Mr. Lehnsherr doesn’t seem right either, not when she knows him as well as he does. It has to be Erik.

Jean had thought at first she was just extra sensitive, that doing so much, letting go the way she did, had meant she was more vulnerable to her own telepathy and other people’s strong emotions than usual. It made sense, as she sat there in that plane Agent MacTaggart and Dr. McCoy had scrounged up from somewhere to fly them home, holding the Professor’s head in her lap as he slept a deep and fitful sleep. 

But it wasn’t everybody’s emotions hitting her that hard. It was _Erik’s_ , in particular, as he sat by himself across the plane, watching the Professor, and then her, and then down at his own hands for ages before glancing up at the Professor again. Pain and anger and history and regret and conviction and confusion and just-- _so much_ that it almost gave Jean a headache, and she had to close her eyes and try and fight past her own exhaustion enough to remember the simplest shields the Professor had taught her and begin to set them up against that messy and strong tornado of feeling.

Halfway through the flight he crossed the cabin to sit next to her. Almost everybody else was asleep by then, or close enough. He was silent for long enough that Jean didn’t think he was going to talk at all, long enough that it was awkward, before he finally said quietly, “You were magnificent out there. You did what no one else could.”

Jean shrugged. “I couldn’t have done it without the Professor.”

His intense pale gaze shifted from her down to the Professor’s face, and something softened around the harsh set of his mouth and jaw. “Charles has a way of bringing out the best in people,” Erik said. “I must admit that. But what you did was… well. The world owes you a debt.”

“I--thank you?” Jean said. She was a little flustered, which annoys her. And because it was at the top of his mind before and thus it was at the top of hers as she looked at him, without thinking about it, “I’m sorry about your family.”

Erik froze for a moment, and then his shoulders relaxed. He stood up and crossed the cabin again, sitting back down in his former position without another word.

That was that, Jean thought, but what was more surprising was when they got back to the school, because over the weeks afterwards they seemed to drift towards each other. Not friends, maybe--it was hard to think of being friends with a grown man, even setting aside former supervillain status--but Jean thought they had a sort of understanding with one another. It was strangely calm being in his company, especially given that in normal circumstances, his mind seemed to lean towards the neatly ordered, firm and direct.

“Take it as one who’s been the apple of Charles’s eye before,” Erik says now, as she finishes the chore, “you are his favorite.”

Erik still is, though--he and Mystique, they’re tied as the two brightest points in the Professor’s mental web of relationships. She saw that easily when they were connected, inside the Professor’s head, without even trying.

It’s not as though she minds the idea of being the Professor’s favorite, though. It sends a warmth all through her chest to think about it. His approval, his help, his mentorship--she can’t imagine what her life would be like if he and Dr. McCoy hadn’t found her and brought her to this school.

Lightly, Jean says, “I didn’t realize you could read thoughts as well. Welcome to the telepathy club.”

Erik shakes his head, making a face. “God forbid,” he says, but there’s a hint of laughter in his voice as well.

* * *

Jean knows she’s dreaming. She knows it’s a dream, and she knows she could stop it at any time and wake herself up. 

She chooses not to.

In her dream, she is in the Professor’s study. It is nighttime, and the lamp by her side is the only light in the room. She’s sitting on the edge of the Professor’s desk, her feet just settled on the floor, and the Professor is in his wheelchair a few feet in front of her, watching as she slowly unbuttons her blouse.

It’s a dream, so the Professor is letting her do it, not saying anything, just looking at her as if he’s in awe of her, as if she’s perfect. She feels beautiful, and elegant. When she slips her blouse off her shoulders and onto the desk, his eyes go straight to her breasts and she can see the way his throat jumps as he swallows.

She stands up next. Unzips her skirt, lets that fall to her feet. She’s just in her bra and her panties now (a fancy, lacy matching set: another sign it’s definitely a dream). The Professor is still completely dressed, in one of the posh suits he wears these days. 

She pushes her shoulders back and tilts her head, closing her eyes to better appreciate the sense of his eyes looking her up and down.

“Jean,” the Professor says, in his rich, accented voice, lower and rougher than she usually hears him. 

The feeling rising up in her isn’t so different from that feeling in Cairo. Like she’s going to burn up. Like she’s invincible. 

She opens her eyes and steps forward to climb into the Professor’s lap. 

“Touch me,” Jean says, when his hands don’t move from their places by his side. She takes them in her own, guiding him up to her breasts. She bites her lip at the first touch of his strong, warm hands against her, the pressure of his skin against her nipples through the layer of fabric.

He doesn’t need her to ask again. The Professor has done this a thousand, a million times before, completely unlike Jean and her inexperience. She can trust him to give her what she wants, even when she doesn’t entirely know what it is. 

He kisses her and he sucks against the skin of her throat and he unhooks her bra and puts his mouth on her breasts and it all feels amazing. 

“Lovely,” the Professor says, breath warm and damp against her neck. “Do you know what a lovely girl you are, my darling? My lovely, special, perfect girl.”

She’s already moving against him in helpless shudders; when his hand slips between her legs, fingers pushing aside the soaked lace of her panties to stroke her, she can’t help but cry out.

“ _Charles_ ,” Jean gasps, and it echoes through her head and outwards in endless ripples.

And then--the dream shifts around her. 

The background of the office around them seems to almost fade out of existence, everything turning grey and formless. She’s standing suddenly, and she’s dressed in the same nightgown she was wearing when she went to bed. She doesn’t see the Professor at all, not until she spins around to find him standing a few feet away.

Standing. And his hair is back again, too. That’s the way the Professor sees _himself_ when he’s mentally sending himself somewhere. This isn’t a dream anymore, then. This is real, the two of them on a telepathic plane.

“Jean,” the Professor starts, “I’m so sorry. I woke up to you calling me and I thought you required my help, or perhaps you were having a nightmare. I didn’t intend--”

He’s babbling. Jean has to interrupt him. “I know,” she says, folding her arms in front of her chest. Her breasts still feel sensitive. All of her still feels turned on, which seems incredibly unfair when none of it was real. “It’s fine. Really.”

The Professor is still looking at her with his huge blue eyes, so full of kindness and understanding. “All right,” he says.

“All right,” Jean repeats. “Good night, Professor.”

She opens her eyes and stares up at the ceiling in the darkness of her bedroom.

* * *

She’s never seen him in her dreams before. When she had nightmares before--and that’s what her dreams usually were, nightmares, like that red ominous one right before everything happened--she might wake up the whole floor, but she didn’t drag anyone in with her. The Professor came to her room then, sat at the edge of her bed to talk her down while Dr McCoy stood watch in the doorway.

This is different. It was the two of them, real and unreal at the same time. 

“There’s no good vocabulary for much of it,” the Professor had told her once, a little mournfully. “But perhaps your generation and the one following you will be the ones to fix that.”

She’s been so fully in the Professor’s mind, and he in hers, and that connection lingers. There’s a kind of knowing, a kind of sensitivity, that she wouldn’t be able to explain to someone else. The Professor, yes, but he’s Charles as well, he’s all the memories and quirks and faults that put together a person. 

And she’s not just a teenage girl, not just a student, not _just_ anything. Jean knows that; and the Professor knows it, too. She may still need guidance, but that’s not the same.

Their connection sits in her mind like the empty spot in your mouth when you’ve lost a tooth; all she wants to do is poke at it. But she doesn’t.

* * *

Erik’s mind gets no less singular the longer Jean knows him. Most of the time it’s so carefully organized, and yet never still. There’s a sadness in him bigger than Jean’s ever seen in anybody, and a rage that’s almost frightening--that _should_ be frightening, she thinks, and yet isn’t. But he’s also funny, and intelligent, and interesting to talk to. He doesn’t speak down to her, or treat her foremost as a teenager compared to his adulthood, which is a nice feeling.

“It’s a dangerous thing, telepathy,” Erik says. 

It’s following an inquiry over some of her training. Jean can’t help but bristle automatically at the words--even now, after everything in Egypt, people might smile and nod at her in the halls, but she can still hear them thinking of what a scary freak she is.

Even as she’s scowling, she recognizes the difference in Erik’s attitude, though. Thoughtful, more than anything else. Approving, maybe.

“It doesn’t have to be,” Jean says stubbornly. “Look at the Professor.” The Professor is no monster, nothing like the dark creature Jean still worries over once in awhile. He’s kind, gentle. Look at all he’s done, for her, for all of the students. 

But Erik laughs aloud at this. 

“If you don’t think Charles is dangerous, you haven’t been paying enough attention,” he tells her. “Don’t look so annoyed. Do you think dangerous is a dirty word? Danger is a part of life. It comes hand and hand with power.”

“It’s certainly not something to be _proud_ of,” Jean retorts.

Erik merely shakes his head, dismissing her opinion. “I knew another telepath once whose sense of ethics was...rather more flexible than Charles’s. I believe she took a certain pride in the intimidation people felt around her.”

“She was your friend?”

She senses Erik’s thoughts rejecting the word _friend_ and then _enemy_ in turn. “A colleague,” he says out loud.

Perhaps she shouldn’t ask, but it’s obvious that there’s more. “What happened to her?”

Erik looks her dead in the eye. “She was taken by scientists who drugged her, killed her, and then froze her brain and sliced it into paper-thin slices to experiment on.” The face he makes is almost like a smile. All the teeth are there, anyway. “They did it to the nice ones, too. All of us mutants are a threat, you know.”

 _Be dangerous enough that it never happens again_ , Jean hears, and...maybe that’s something to think about it. Is it really so different from what the Professor said: the strong protecting the weak?

* * *

“There’s no such thing as a noble mutation or an evil one,” the Professor says. He’s rubbing his rook absently between his thumb and forefinger as he muses. “A mutation is neither good nor bad; it simply _is_. It’s easy to see how people might have taken them as miracles--or conversely, as a sign of divine misfortune. But of course we know better now. Every mutation I’ve seen has been a wonder in its own right, but it’s nothing other than science. Which is plenty wondrous enough, I should think.”

He sets his piece down carefully and continues, “Good and bad, though. Those come down to people. It’s all about the choices we choose to make, Jean.”

Jean bites her lip as she studies the board. The Professor has left his queen open to her knight, she sees after a minute. It’s a juicy prize, and it’s tempting to go after it, to assume he’s missed the crack in his defenses. But she fell for that gambit before, in a previous game. The Professor’s craftier than that. He let the queen sacrifice herself to protect the weak, but vital, king.

Jean lowers her hand to her bishop instead.

* * *

Her eighteenth birthday falls a few days after the school year ends. For what ‘school year’ is worth, anyway, considering the long break from academics that they all took as the rebuilding had to happen. But it’s summer, and the kids who have somewhere else to go are gone away from their vacation, and it’s down to just a few of them.

Jean _could_ go home. She’s luckier than some of the other kids. Her mom and dad worry about her, maybe even are a little scared of her, but they love her, too. She could manage walking on eggshells in her house for a few months.

But she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to fold herself in, not even a little bit, not when she doesn’t have to.

* * *

The Professor is more quiet than usual at their weekly game. He’s distracted, too, making the sort of foolish or shortsighted moves he usually avoids. 

It’s not as though it’s a mystery why. Erik’s gone. It’s not even as if the Professor is the only one affected by it--Peter’s kind of upset, and Mystique seems to have complicated emotions about it, and Jean herself is a little annoyed that Erik didn’t bother to say goodbye to her properly, after all the time they’ve spent together. But the Professor is hit harder by it than anybody else. 

Is it selfish to miss having his concentration fully on her? Because Jean does.

She clears her throat. “Checkmate.” 

The Professor looks over the board carefully, a smile slowly crossing his face as he takes it in.

“So it is,” he says, sounding cheerful. “Well done, Jean, you’ve certainly put me in my place.” He sets his king on its side and settles back with a sigh. “You’ve had an excellent day all around, haven’t you? Your work in the Danger Room earlier was remarkable. The effort you’ve been putting in shows.”

“It feels good, being in there,” Jean says. “Like maybe this is what we’re all supposed to be doing.”

“Hm,” the Professor says, gazing down at the chessboard again. “Maybe it is, at that.”

It _had_ felt good. She had been nervous, yes, but as the session went on, the nerves seemed less important than that feeling of being strong, and complete, and powerful. 

She liked that feeling. Likes it. Maybe Jean is still a freak, but she is an X-Man too. 

Jean folds her hands in her lap and gazes very carefully across the chess set at the Professor.

Control. Power. Affection and acceptance and pride. Connection. Desire. No room for fear or doubt.

She remembers the feeling of letting herself burn and thinks: _Let go, Jean._

“Charles,” she says carefully, and as he raises his head, she knows she’s ready.


End file.
